JUSTIN ROGERS

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Questions

Giving an ‘A’

September 25, 2025

What if you give an ‘A’ grade before someone ‘deserves’ it?

Benjamin Zander has a concept in his amazing book, The Art of Possibility called “giving an A”.

It’s named after the a grade he gives his students at the beginning of the semester BEFORE they have turned in any work.

He stands before the class at the start of the term and congratulates them all on their A grade. He asks them to write a letter to him, as if from the future, explaining all the reasons they deserved the A grade they had received.

I absolutely love this idea.

Ben encourages us to ‘give an A’ to people in all aspects of our life. Someone cut you off in traffic? The barista is rude to you? Your boss is short with you?

What would giving an A to these people look like?

It’s making the most generous assumption of them. It’s not asking “Why do they hate me!?”

But asking a much more generous question like “I wonder what difficulty they’re facing right now?”

A couple of things might happen.

Number 1, you stop the loop of negativity because you have a generous belief about them. They may well be snapped out of the pattern they’re in. Of course this isn’t guaranteed, but it opens the possibility for them to live into the best version of themselves.

Number 2 (and this one is pretty certain) you will feel much better about the interaction if you’ve given the person an ‘A’. If you generously assume that something awful and truly difficult must be going on for them to be like this, you have a lot more peace in your day. You may even get some of the lovely side effects of a ‘metta’ type meditation- loving kindness.

There’s zero downside to giving an A and infinite upside.

It’s my favourite thing.

Deciding what mood you bring to the class

September 15, 2025

Deciding what mood you bring to the class

The first time I got my actor head shots done a friend of mine had some great advice:

What three qualities as an actor do you want these headshots to show?

I think I chose like quirky, trustworthy and vulnerable.

It was a great focus, because I went into the session clear on the moods I wanted the photos to have.

I think about this with students as well: what is the mood I want to bring to the my classroom today?

Mood is completely palpable; especially to young people. We may think we’re hiding our anxiety or annoyance well, but the kids can feel it.

Once you’ve decided what mood you’re taking to your lesson- it’s time to start priming it. I find it hard to just choose a mood in my head and make a ‘note to self’ to start ‘doing’ that mood when I enter the class.

It doesn’t work like that- you have to embody it. So I’ll gently begin living into the mood I chose in the hours leading up to my class.

Recently, I chose the word ‘glee’. I love that word and it cracks up. To take ‘glee’ in something is so fun. So that’s what I did. I took glee in making my breakfast and going about my morning. Glee in meeting people on the way to work.

And when I eventually did end up in front of my students, it wasn’t a great leap to bring my word into the classroom. I’d been edging toward it all morning.

I find it so empowering that we have this level of choice. Knowing how much mood can affect the learning that happens in my class and knowing I have the power to authentically change that is powerful.

Think easy when its hard

September 14, 2025

To sing a high note they say think ‘down’

It’s advice I got at drama school and in many rehearsals. When we try and sing a high note our body tends to tense up and prevents us from doing our best version of the Bee Gees!

Singing teachers insist we need to relax and feel free in the face of the high notes. Easier said than done!

I like to think of this for other things in my life too.

When I feel myself tensing up or over preparing in the face of something I believe is going to be difficult- I’ve been experimenting with asking myself.

What would this look like if it were easy? Can I just jump straight to that part?

More often than not you can jump to it being easy.

Example

August 30, 2025

How would you behave if your every action was being documented for your children and grandchildren to watch back?

Alien green screens and a new plan!

July 26, 2025

So yeah, I’m approximately 204 videos in to my daily film making habit. The last twenty of which were a series that required hours of green screening each day (yes, you read that right, hours)

Not the dream.

But I’m glad I saw out the series and was pleased with the final episode I put out yesterday. I’m glad I could exhale completely the initial impulse that spurred it, I mean how great to make something with a beginning middle and an end!

I was reminded by the great Chase Jarvis about the purpose of practice. That’s what I’m doing with this daily habit after all- I’m practicing. Chase reminded me that the purpose of practice is to practice the most fundamental, elemental basics of the thing you’re trying to get better at.

For me it’s acting, it’s telling stories that connect people to their heart and the hearts of others real or imaginary. Things that make people laugh, but most of all move people in a way. This can be a 1 second clip or a 3 hour movie- the length doesn’t matter, but that’s the element I’m seeking to improve.

Looking back on my 20 days of working on this series, I realised the majority of the time was spent keying out backgrounds and creating complex soundscapes to sound like another dimension. And I’m definitely not trying to practice keying out backgrounds OR creating complex soundscapes to sound like another dimension.

I suppose in a vague pursuit of story telling, acting and moving people I found myself doing that. And I’m glad I did because it spurred this realisation.

ANYWAY.

All this to say- I won’t be spending those hours on the thing I’m not here to practice. S0 my new rule is this:

Each day’s video can take no more than 30 minutes to shoot and no more than 30 minutes to edit. That’s it.

I think this will be tricky to do- BUT I can’t let my life be slowly taken over alien green screening. I hope the constraint will force a ultra clarity on the purpose of my practice each day and help me build the skill I want rather than a side quest that accidentally wastes my time.

Let’s see.

How to be creative

June 24, 2025

This feels like the most important question of my life right now. It seems to allude me in lots of ways and there are many factors.

Let me give some context for those just tuning in: at the beginning of this year I challenged myself to create a short clip, film or acting snippet every day.

So everyday I make, wether inspiration strikes or (as is more often the case) perspiration strikes in the form of “oh no, I haven’t made anything yet”.

The results, as you can imagine are varied, heck go and see for yourself: https://www.tiktok.com/@justinrogersnz

So each day, I’m actively asking the question (out of emergency need) “how the heck can I be more creative?!”

Enter Dave Burgess.

I mentioned in another post that I’m reading Dave’s book, Teach Like A Pirate. It’s great, you should read it too.

He talks about using questions in order to prompt our creativity. Dave says its pretty hopeless to wait for inspiration to strike- I’m certainly guilty of this and I think that’s because I have indeed randomly got ideas to turn into my little daily morsels.

Dave encourages us to engage instead in the process. A key part of which is the asking of effective questions.

It’s “What are three ways I could walk in this door that I find fun” (specific)

Over “What the heck should I make?!” (too broad and scary)

I’m excited and inspired by Dave’s example here- that just because it can look like magic, creativity is not magic. It’s a craft and one that can (and should) be practiced.

What serves you?

June 18, 2025

You can believe anything- the real question is: does it serve you?

You could believe there is a little more learning to be done before you start (hint, there’ll always be more)

OR

You could believe that all you need is within you already.

Anything you don’t know, you have the capacity to pick up. AND best of all there is a mountain of gold within you already waiting to be used that you mightn’t even realise is there until you ask for it.

Easier than you think

June 15, 2025

Sometimes the big difficult thing you’re avoiding all day actually turns out to be easy. For this to be the case, you have to give it permission to be easy. To loosen the screws, try these:

How long would it actually take?

What would it look like if it were easy?

What’s the 10 minute version I can do now?

How can it actually be fun?

Entertain, Engage and Educate PT 5

May 31, 2025

In the last post I talked about freeing the expectations we put on the people we are working with.

Today, we move on to ‘engage’. Are the people I’m talking to listening? Are they comprehending and making meaning of what I’m sharing?

I offer a simple exercise we use in acting to keep our performances ‘alive’.

In acting, we have objectives. I might want my scene partner to leave the room. Or I may want to make them understand something. These kinds of objectives are great because they activate actors and take us outside of our own heads. The test is in the other person. At any given point I can look to the other actor/ character and ‘test’ (using our senses) am I closer or further from my objective?

This same test can be used to test engagement. You can ask yourself, what would these people look like if they were engaged? This may seem contradictory to our last idea of loosening the grip, but what we’re really after is simply being alive and aware to what you’re receiving from them.

Are they really looking at you and seeing you or are their eyes glazed over? What ever you notice, you can make the assessment as to whether you’re closer to or further from engaging.

This puts us in a very powerful position because we are no longer wed to the action (how we get them engaged) but only to the outcome (whether they are they engaged). This unleashes us to a world of possibilities of how to bring about high levels of engagement.

So as we work through these steps of entertain, engage and educate I invite you continue to test externally whether you are closer or further and change your approach endlessly until you get to the desired outcome.

They believe what you believe

May 22, 2025

What do you want your students to believe about themselves? About their abilities? About the world? How can you generate a certainty within yourself that communicates these to them? How can you construct environments, experiences and connections that foster these beliefs?

Useful, inspiring and cool things

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